In this episode of #90secondFIX, Chris Lees shares his 10 tips for better FIX conformance testing.
Discover more from Chris on the FixSpec YouTube channel, where we put out new content each week.
1. Organize your conformance test really clearly. Make sure they’re in well-defined sections that are easy to remove.
2. Tie them to customer capabilities as you go through things with your customer. You’ll understand what they’re capable of; track those things as you go.
3. Make them small, no more than three or four steps.
4. Avoid preconditions which actually repeat other tests earlier on. If you find that, then it’s better to merge the two tests together.
5. Don’t make them impossible. Don’t ask people to put in dates that are invalid for example. It just doesn’t make sense.
6. Remember that you’re not actually QAing your system. That’s the QA’s job. You’re checking that the customer can conform.
7. Remember you aren’t QAing your customer’s system; that’s their job, talking about the API and whether they can talk to it.
8. Pre-arrange your testing window. That means the number of days of which you’re willing to accept somebody can do some testing. It’s better to agree that upfront and think about it after the fact.
9. Don’t aim to be exhaustive. Nobody has the time for it, it’s better just to think about quality and not quantity.
10. Try to make it self-service. Everybody might be split up in different time zones so it’s important that they’re able to test whenever it’s convenient for them.
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